The contents of communication represent an essential element of the communication process as a whole. In recent years, the description and analysis of these communication contents have grown to be a central preoccupation of communication scholars. Since the early 1970’s, an increasing number of studies based on a standardized media content analysis have been published in scientific journals. This indicates that it has reached the status of an important and well-approved instrument of empirical research (Merten & Grossmann, 1996, p.70f). Obviously, to assess the social relevance of a new communication environment such as the Internet, careful and systematic observation of its contents seems inevitable. In the long run, all assumptions about the possible impact of online communication must take into account the very nature of the communicated content in order to be more than pure speculation and storytelling. But before developing a completely new approach for this purpose, it seems reasonable to argue against the background of experiences made in the past with content analysis of traditional mass media, since they may provide a guideline for the analysis of the „new channel“ of Internet content (Krippendorff, 1980, p.10).